Many imaging applications involve the use of optical systems such as microscopes and other lens arrangements to capture image information about inert and biological specimens. The captured images are used for a multitude of applications such as analysis of cell behavior, identification of tissue characteristics and more.
In many imaging applications, the internal structure of a specimen is desirably accessed and observed. For such applications, subsurface imaging techniques have been employed with some success. In some applications, portions of a specimen located at depths below a surface are imaged to facilitate three-dimensional imaging.
When imaging tissue, a variety of characteristics of the image and the imaging approach impact the value and usability of the imaging. For example, microscopic imaging applications often benefit from high resolution images. In addition, it is often desirable to identify and recognize a large number of different characteristics (e.g., different molecular components). However, obtaining images, and in particular high resolution images, has generally involved a tedious and time-consuming process, often requiring expensive analysis equipment. Many earlier approaches are also susceptible to significant noise in collected image data, tend to perturb the specimen undergoing analysis and are often quantitatively unreliable.
One field in which imaging has been useful is the field of biomedical analysis of disease and other conditions such as aging. Disease conditions and consequences of aging are related to molecular changes in cells that compose tissue. The analysis of cells has been challenging due to the extreme complexity of cells and tissues, the very large numbers of distinct cellular molecules that must be taken into account, and because molecules related to specific disease and aging mechanisms may exist in very low abundance and may thus be very hard to detect or measure.
These and other issues continue to present challenges to optical imaging and, in particular, to the optical imaging of the molecular characteristics of biological tissue.